Flower round up

1phlomisfloweringI can’t resist. I keep snapping shots of flowers in the garden and need to get them onto the blog.

The camassias in the mint and sage along the walnut path have come up again this year. That’s a delight.

Some you know well. Others are making their first appearance.

I let the poppies self seed in the potager; they are great bee magnets. And the deep red is so satisfying in among the green of the lettuce.

1poppiesI have to weed a few of them out. It would be a poppy only zone if I let them. But there are enough to enjoy. And watch the petals wafting over the ground in the wind.

The new arrivals are long awaited. Leslie gave me these phlomis russeliana plants two years ago. And I planted them in the terrace bank to see how they would do.

They did nothing. They sulked. Well, so would you if you were deprived of attention, water, soil and all the other fripperies most plants crave.

Plants on the terrace bank have to fight it out. It toughens them up.

And this year I have the results. Towering spires 1flowerlilyof phlomis magic.

Leslie’s other contribution are these orange lilies. Lilium pumilum. My extravagant birthday presents from last year.

I had to check the spelling. And try and ignore the vivid red varieties which appear on the internet. I have fifty of these fantastic bulbs. In pots. (Mole rat deterrent.) And they don’t seem to have suffered the ill effects of being confined.

These ones are in the herb garden. But you can see them peeping out of the step garden, the edge of the potager and even in the depths of the shade garden.

1cistus detail

And while I’m distracting you with the vivid coloured ones, I will quietly slip in the detail of the cistus that is currently dazzling the rest of the shrubs in the barn garden.

Oh my. That is one shocking pink colour.

I need to give it a really hard prune once these flowers are over. Usually it is an ephemeral display and I can breathe a sigh of relief and get on with enjoying the rather sensible green of the leaves for another year.

But this hot dry weather seems to suit them perfectly. There is just no sign of them fading just yet. Alas.